Ivory Coast Violence & D'Souza's Whiteman

From yesterday's BBC article "Mass grave exhumed in Abidjan:"

Ivory Coast's government has started to exhume the mass graves of people killed in the violence that hit the country after the disputed 2010 election. Justice Minister Gnenema Coulibaly observed a moment of silence as a grave on the grounds of a mosque in the main city, Abidjan, was dug up. More than 3,000 people died after Laurent Gbagbo refused to cede power to current President Alassane Ouattara. The conflict ended after French-backed forces captured him in April 2011. Mr Gbagbo was handed over to the International Criminal Court. Judges are still to decide whether to put him on trial over the post-poll violence.

For a novel about violence in Ivory Coast, try Whiteman by Tony D'Souza:

Jack Diaz is a young American relief worker in a Muslim village in the Ivory Coast, part of an endeavor to bring potable water to the impoverished villagers. As it becomes more and more apparent that he cannot achieve his original goal, he drifts into various projects from hunting to farming to teaching villagers about AIDS prevention to taking up ill-advised love affairs. Tensions between Muslims and Christians mount and add to the layers of cultural and political nuances that Jack struggles to understand.

Chinua Achebe's Death & Things Fall Apart

From yesterday's Guardian article "Nigeria in mourning for Chinua Achebe:"

From Nobel laureates to roadside booksellers, Nigerians expressed their grief and shock at the death at 82 of Chinua Achebe, the literary giant whose works made him a household name and national hero. Many who had worked alongside him wept as they paid tribute, and bookstores in downtown Lagos said his books sold out as news of his death trickled in. Despite his age and distance from his homeland– he died in Boston, where he had lived for years – Achebe's frequent and often barbed pronouncements against an oil-fed Nigerian elite kept him very much in the national psyche. He further endeared himself to a younger generation of Nigerians weary of corruption, when he twice turned down a national honour in 2004 and 2011. African literature burst onto the world stage with Achebe's 1958 novel Things Fall Apart, which portrays an Igbo yam farmer's fatal struggle to come to terms with British colonialism in the late 19th century. It remains the best-selling novel ever written by an African author, having sold more than 10-million copies in 50 different languages. Nelson Mandela, who read his books during his 27-year incarceration, once said of him: "He was the writer in whose company the prison walls came down."

Achebe is one of my top ten favorite authors. To understand who Achebe was and why he's so important, I recommend his most famous (and, IMHO, best) novel, Things Fall Apart:

Things Fall Apart tells two overlapping, intertwining stories, both of which center around Okonkwo, a “strong man” of an Ibo village in Nigeria. The first of these stories traces Okonkwo's fall from grace with the tribal world in which he lives, and in its classical purity of line and economical beauty it provides us with a powerful fable about the immemorial conflict between the individual and society. The second story, which is as modern as the first is ancient, and which elevates the book to a tragic plane, concerns the clash of cultures and the destruction of Okonkwo's world through the arrival of aggressive, proselytizing European missionaries.

Those who liked Things Fall Apart might also enjoy the lesser-known Arrow of God:

The novel is set amongst the villages of the Igbo people in British Nigeria of the 1920s. Ezeulu is the chief priest of the god Ulu, worshipped by the six villages of Umuaro. The book begins with Ezeulu and Umuaro getting in a battle with a nearby village, Okperi. The conflict is abruptly resolved when T.K. Winterbottom, the British colonial overseer, intervenes. After the battle, a Christian missionary, John Goodcountry, arrives in Umuaro. When Goodcountry begins to tell the villages tales of Nigerians in the Niger Delta who abandoned their traditional "bad customs" in favor of Christianity, the conflict between Goodcountry and Ezeulu builds in a showdown that threatens to destroy their village.

Child Soldiers & Iweala's Beasts of No Nation

From today's BBC article "Syria crisis: Children 'recruited' by armed groups:"

Increasing numbers of children in Syria are being recruited by armed groups on both sides of the conflict, Save the Children says in a report. Children are being used as porters, guards, informers and fighters and, in some cases, as human shields, the charity said in Childhood Under Fire. Some two million children are in need of assistance in Syria, Save the Children estimates. It says the two-year conflict has affected all aspects of their lives.

For a novel on child soldiers, try Beasts of No Nation by Uzodinma Iweala:

In this stunning debut novel, Agu, a young boy in an unnamed West African nation, is recruited into a unit of guerrilla fighters as civil war engulfs his country. Haunted by his father's own death at the hands of militants, Agu is vulnerable to the dangerous yet paternal nature of his new commander. While the war rages on, Agu becomes increasingly divorced from the life he had known before the conflict started—a life of school friends, church services, and time with his family still intact. In a powerful, strikingly original voice that vividly captures Agu's youth and confusion, Uzodinma Iweala has produced a harrowing, inventive, and deeply affecting novel.

I'm completely out of touch with what's playing in theaters, but it seems that a film on child soldiers just came out last week. The Christian Science Monitor reports that "'War Witch' brings the plight of an African child soldier to horrifying life:"

Set in sub-Saharan Africa, “War Witch” brings us shudderingly close to the life of a 12-year-old girl who lives peacefully with her mother and father in an isolated village until pillaging rebels order her to shoot her parents. Komona, beautifully played by Rachel Mwanza, who has never acted before, has no choice: If she refuses, the rebels will kill her and hack her parents to death with a machete. So begins her initiation into the atrocious world of a child soldier.

UPDATE:  a longer, well-written review of Iweala's book can be found at the Amy Reads blog.

Nigeria Kidnappings & Habila's Oil on Water

From today's BBC story "Nigeria foreign workers abducted in Bauchi state:"

At least six construction workers, some of them foreigners, have been seized by gunmen who attacked a camp in northern Nigeria, officials say...  No-one has admitted the abductions but the Islamist militant group, Boko Haram, has staged a series of attacks in northern Nigeria.

Kidnappings in Nigeria feature centrally in Helon Habila's novel Oil on Water:

In the oil-rich and environmentally devastated Nigerian Delta, the wife of a British oil executive has been kidnapped. Two journalists-a young upstart, Rufus, and a once-great, now disillusioned veteran, Zaq-are sent to find her. In a story rich with atmosphere and taut with suspense, Oil on Water explores the conflict between idealism and cynical disillusionment in a journey full of danger and unintended consequences. As Rufus and Zaq navigate polluted rivers flanked by exploded and dormant oil wells, in search of "the white woman," they must contend with the brutality of both government soldiers and militants.